News

Email access hampered by server failure

Students attempting to log into their Boston University email accounts Monday night may never have gained access due to a combination of heavy use and hardware failure, Information Technology Consulting Services Director Jim Stone said.

Stone confirmed that the university was having a problem with its servers, although it is not affecting everyone.

The problem is a combination of excessive spam, broken hardware and high email usage typical of this time in the semester – a “Murphy’s Law” situation, according to Stone.

Four pieces of hardware “essential to good service” experienced successive failure, leaving the web-based program Horde “basically unusable” and Silkymail working at a considerably slower speed.

“When these types of failures happen, huge strains are put on the system that’s left working,” Stone said.

Stone said technicians have been “chasing the failures” over the past few days, so students may be experiencing “peaks and valleys” of good and bad service.

“You’re not seeing days of poor response of service,” he said. “We are looking at upgrading hardware and improving the performance of the hardware.”

Heavy spam entering the university system, which processes 1.5 million pieces of email every day, has also contributed to the delay. Seventy percent of mail traveling through the system is classified as spam, which Stone said is not responsible for the hardware failure.

During the last month of classes, email usage by students, faculty and staff is also high–increasing traffic on the network.

“Demand for email services by individuals is certainly high and growing,” Stone said. “More and more people want these kinds of services from Boston University.”

More than just text is being sent across the network as well.

“They’re using larger emails,” Stone said. “Attachments are very popular; pictures, videos are being sent in emails. It’s extremely taxing on computer hardware.”

Last week, the university sent out notification emails to Class of 2010 applicants, prompting them to log into the BU network to check their acceptance status. But Stone said he did not think this small peak in use was an “overwhelming factor” in the hardware failure.

“That was a situation that was short in duration,” he said. “It may have contributed to some load with web login, but once those people have checked in whether or not they’ve been accepted, you lose that burst of people.”

Over the next few days, technicians will be repairing the broken hardware and looking for other solutions.

“Clearly, we expect the load on the systems to be high, especially in the afternoons for a couple more weeks,” Stone said. “As that load drops off and as we make improvements, things will get better.”

As IT makes improvements, students may still see their email clients working slower than they have at other points in the year.

“It’s not so painful that you give up and walk away,” Stone said. “But it’s not going to be a Ferrari in the next couple of weeks.”

Client-based programs, including Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook, experienced fewer effects from server problems. Stone suggested students use these types of program. Instructions can be found on bu.edu/pcsc/email/software.

College of Arts and Sciences freshman Teresa Chamorro said she uses Horde and had trouble checking her email.

“It’s impossible to check your email because it’s always down or really slow,” she said. “It took me 20 minutes today to check my email, and then it pretty much froze.”

Chamorro said the lack of access to email was causing a problem when getting in touch with professors.

College of Communication freshman Sarah Steinberg also had difficulty reaching her professors and fellow students via email, a necessity for communication on a class project.

While trying to sign onto Horde at the CAS computer kiosk, she waited 20 minutes to reach the login page, and several more minutes to access the email she needed from her professor.

“I had to get the email from my professor, so I had to wait,” she said.

However, CAS freshman Alicia Hook said she was not experiencing many problems with her use of Horde.

COM sophomore Kate Yenrick said she had problems signing onto her email from a university computer.

“It wouldn’t even let me into the login page,” she said. “I was in a hurry, so I just didn’t check it.”

Yenrick said she was able to check her email from her Macintosh computer at home through her client-based program, Mail.

“It’s just an annoyance,” she said. “If you don’t have your computer with you, you’re not able to get the billion pieces of junk mail they send you.”

Staff writer Jenny Paul contributed reporting to this article.

Comments are closed.